Play It Again, Sam
by Patricia de Lioncourt
Summary: Belated wishlist-fic '11 prompt. As far as Buffy was concerned, this world was just a little too similar.


**Disclaimer:** I don't own Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Supernatural. Buffy belongs to Whedon, and Supernatural and related characters belong to Kripke. No money made.  
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Prompter: **yakshini

**A/N:** The setting for this is post S7 for Buffy. Setting for Supernatural varies as the piece unfolds. As you can see, this is another belated fic, but I hope my prompter likes what I did with it. Please enjoy!

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**Play It Again, Sam**

This world was different from hers. A lot different. Sure, there were monsters, and people who fought them. But the rules were different, and if Buffy had learned anything in her several years as a slayer, it was that rules mattered.

So, after she had made many slayers in the last battle of the Sunnydale Hellmouth, she had thought she could take a break. Let the others gather the new slayers while she finally rested up a bit. But The Powers That Be had other ideas. She went to bed in her own bed one night—or her new own bed in a rental house in Cleveland—and she woke up in a field in the middle of Nowhere, U.S.A. In the interim, she had dreamed. A big, boomy-style voice had spoken to her, telling her that her job was done, but that she was needed elsewhere. And then, before she could argue, field.

It wasn't hard to figure out she was in a different world—or dimension, whatever. Her first fight with a monster taught her that. Remember that thing about different rules? Yeah. She'd almost gotten her ass handed to her by the ghost of some crazy person or such that had died all along in her house—but not before murdering a bunch of innocent children that had lived in the neighborhood. She was saved by two brothers, Dean and Sam Winchester. They had gone their separate ways, with Sam being thoughtful enough to leave Buffy some sort of contact number for them. She met up again with them later, when they were after a demon named Lilith. She fought alongside them as they struggled to keep Sam from making a deal with Lilith to stop the apocalypse—the big one, all biblical and stuff. She'd met Castiel, their angel buddy, that time 'round too.

"You can't fight prophecies, Dean," Buffy had assured the elder brother as he tried his best to outdo what Chuck had written.

"What the hell am I supposed to do, huh? Just let Sam sleep with Lilith? Become a demon's plaything, _again_?"

Buffy couldn't argue that it didn't sit well with her that Sam was going to get all close and personal with the demon. She kind of liked Sam the way he was—even though something about him set her slayer-given spidey-senses a'tinglin'. But they stopped Lilith, with some help from Castiel. And the three of them lived to fight another day, but from that moment on, she stuck by them.

They were something of a team, and it made Buffy long for home, her friends, Dawn. But she was a slayer—a breed of fighter that just didn't exist in this world—so she knew what came first. Save the world, then mope. Her company helped though, even though Sam was a little moody at times. She recognized that kind of moodiness, when Willow had been quitting magic. But she kept it to herself, not wanting to worry Dean any more than necessary.

And then the revelation came: Sam had been drinking demon's blood. Dean didn't say too much about it, but Buffy knew. She knew it had hurt him. So, at one stop while Dean ran into random gas station number forty-six, Buffy slid into the driver's seat of the Impala.

"I get it, you know," she said.

Sam arched a brow. "Get what?"

"Why you do it. With the demon blood."

He scoffed, rolling his eyes. "Then enlighten me, please."

"You think it's for the best. That it's not hurting anything. I had a friend, back in my world, who went through something similar. But it does hurt. It hurts everyone whether you want it to or not. You can stop while you're ahead, though. Take it from me, Sam. Save yourself the trouble."

He didn't say anything in reply, so Buffy went back to the backseat. But she stayed close to him after that. She didn't trust his demon buddy, Ruby. She gave her some serious wiggins. Dean agreed with her on that. Which made sense, since Ruby had been in league with Team Satan from the get-go. Buffy had let Sam out of her sights that time. So had Dean.

Sam was remorseful. During the whole apocalypse, Sam was like a kicked puppy. And when Dean and Sam went their separate ways, Buffy chose to tag along with Sam. Because he needed a friend more than Dean did. Dean had Cas.

During that time, Buffy got close with Sam. Real close. Like, naked between the sheets close. It had been a long time she had felt that way about anyone. She loved him, but she also felt the need to protect him. But he still filled her dating M.O. Sam was definitely not normal.

Then Dean and Sam reunited, and they fought on. They beat the apocalypse, at the cost of Sam's life. And then Sam was back, and suddenly they were all concerned with souls. That was something Buffy was used to on an epic level. She had her boyfriend back, and he was soulless. And then, they restored his soul. And they fought on some more.

"Always another monster to fight," Buffy remarked on day as Dean, Sam, and herself sat in Bobby Singer's house, discussing purgatory.

Sam chuckled and wrapped his arm around her shoulders. "Must be a day that ends in 'y.'"

Dean rolled his eyes. "We should contact Cas. See what he knows about this purgatory mess."

Mystical all powerful friends. Check. Boyfriend who was a little more than normal. Check. Friends who just knew way to much about killing things. Check.

Yeah, maybe this world was different from her own. But, in a lot of ways, it was just all too similar.


End file.
